Admiral Theobald Jones (15 April 1790 – 7 February 1868), also known as Toby Jones,[1] was an Irish officer in the British Royal Navy, a Tory politician, a noted lichenologist, and a fossil-collector. The County Londonderry-born son of a Church of Ireland clergyman, Jones was descended from a 17th-century Welsh settler in Ireland. Several generations of his family had held public office in the Kingdom of Ireland, including membership of the pre-union Parliament of Ireland.
Entering the navy aged 13 during the Napoleonic Wars, the teenage Jones survived several naval engagements and the burning of his ship at night when he was 16. After ten years serving under the captaincy of his step-mother's brother, Henry Blackwood, Jones reached the rank of commander by age 25, and captain at 38, but never actually sailed as a captain.
Aged 40, Jones entered Parliament for County Londonderry, in the interest of the Marquess of Waterford. An Orangeman and Ultra Tory[2] of "plain unassuming manners",[3] he sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom at Westminster from 1830 until he stood down from Parliament in 1857. A member of several learned societies, he occupied his retirement from politics by making the first comprehensive catalogue of Irish lichens, laying the foundation of Irish lichenology.[4]
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